Lolita Study Guide

Chapter Summaries

Lolita Summary of Chapters

Without a doubt, we could find out somebody, who didn`t read Lolita novel, written by Vladimir Nabokov, but the majority of literature connoisseurs did it. The novel belongs to the list of the best 100 English novels of the XXth century, though, at first, it was published in France.

The most powerful feature of this novel is its belle –lettres style of language. The author of it, originally Russian, got a brilliant Oxford education. He didn`t want to be just a storyteller, all his life long he aspired to be a world known writer with a unique style, impressive literary language, and original usage of different stylistic devices. As a top notch literature magician, he coined his author metaphors, double entendres, cross-cultural puns, irony figures, anagrams, innuendoes, aposiopesis, and paradoxes. That`s why, while reading V. Nabokov, I caught myself on a thought, that I paid much more attention to his highly unique language, to the brilliance of his inner world, and just after that I tried not to loose the thread of his plot events. How did he manage to do it, nobody knows, because still now, nobody could write in such a-la-Nabokov style. I guess, that in all his chef-d’œuvre works he fused the stylistics of English, French and Russian literature, which he loved the most.

As for the plot of Lolita novel, it is also nonstandard and just balances on the verge of human morale. A middle-aged man Humbert falls in love with a 12-year-old girl, called Dolores, later nicknamed by him as Lolita. It is not surprising that at first, all American and British publishing houses refused to print it in the 1950s. Paris made an exception and did it in 1955.

Lolita Part I. Chapters 1-10.

Humbert starts telling his life story and calls Lolita a precursor, and himself he calls as a murderer. According to his story, he was born in Paris in 1910 and had a mixed European background. He remembers Annabel, one of his cousins, who was just only several months younger, and with whom they had a completely mad love summer. Just several months later his girlfriend died of typhus. Twenty-four years passed, nevertheless, he was still under her spells. As a college student, Humbert spent a lot of time with prostitutes and came to the conclusion that the best girls for him are the so-called nymphets, from 9 till 14 years old, cause they have a fantastic power. He started dating a nymphet prostitute Monique, but she turned into a woman rather quickly. Soon he married some Polish doctor`s daughter but was deeply disappointed. Four years later, his Polish wife, Valeria, started relationships with some Russian Taxi driver. Humbert vowed to kill Valeria but failed to do it. Later he immigrated to the USA, where he got two nervous breakdowns while working in some Arctic exhibition. After the mental hospital, he went to a small New England town, where he met Charlotte and her daughter Lolita.

Chapters 11-20.

Humbert agrees to stay in the house of Charlotte and to start tutoring her in the fall. Once, staying with Lolita alone, he puts her on his lap and starts singing happy songs. Charlotte Haze prevents Humbert from being close to Lolita, she even sends a letter, in which he threatens Humbert to leave her. Humbert decides to marry Charlotte. They often went to Hourglass Lake in summer. There Humbert realizes that he wants desperately to kill her. Nevertheless, he fails to do it.

Chapters 21-33.

Charlotte suspects Humbert that he covers something in his locked drawers. Humbert says that these were his old love letters. She does not believe in it and after opening them, she takes a diary, revealing the deep feeling of Humbert towards her daughter. In a shock, she runs away from her house and gets right under the wheels of some speedy moving car. After the death of Charlotte, Humbert does not tell the truth to Lolita, he takes her from a camp, buys her a lot of dresses, and just only in his car reveals the truth, planning to check in a hotel room for him and Lolita. Humbert tells the jury that he regrets what he had done, and Lolita was completely different from Anabel. The whole night Humbert looks at Lolita, not trying to touch her, but at 6.15 she seduces him, for her, it is like a game with her Charlie boy. After